Killing With Confidence (13 page)

Unbeknown to Connor,
Badger had already been in hospital for a week when he received the
call from Rita. She had told him bluntly how the doctors hadn’t
given him long to live, six months at most. That was clearly a lie,
probably told because everyone – including the terminally
ill – needed hope.

After the phone call
Connor had wept as he hadn’t wept before. Not even the death of his
grandparents had triggered such an emotional response. He just
couldn’t imagine life without Badger. His mentor had always been
there for him, whether it was for help and advice on a story, or
just for a chinwag. They had been inseparable at the
Daily
Herald
, with Connor accompanying Badger on his many fag breaks,
even though the younger man never smoked. The age gap was fifteen
years, but they seemed the only ones who were oblivious to it. As
the exclusive splashes continued to roll in for the pair,
professional jealousy and resentment set in with a small core of
staff. They began spreading wicked rumours of a gay affair –
why else would a haggard old hack be hanging around with a handsome
upstart?

The gossip stopped
abruptly one day when Badger suddenly excused himself from the
smoking shed regulars to slam a passing reporter against the
outside wall of the
Daily Herald
building. With barely
concealed fury, Badger had gone eyeball to eyeball with the
understandably frightened reporter and warned him that if he spread
any more malicious rumours about himself and Connor then his wife
would somehow find out he’d been ‘screwing one of the telesales
girls’.

The reporter had made
a feeble attempt to deny everything, before his shoulders visibly
sagged. He’d been caught bang to rights by an old journalist who
had simply used his reporting skills – mixed with hints of
menace and violence – to find the source of the gay rumours.
With his target firmly in his sights he then set about digging up
some dirt on the man.

That had been the
easy part. Over a coffee with the editor’s PA Moira – who had
been on the
Daily Herald
’s staff as long as Badger – he
had begun his conversation with, ‘I need your help with this cunt,
McKay.’ Half an hour later he left armed with the name of McKay’s
mistress and how the gossipmonger had been warned about putting
meals and hotel stays for his illicit affair on expenses.

Like a true
gentleman, Badger had escorted Moira back to her desk, before
kissing her on both cheeks saying, ‘You are a darling, my dear.’
The fact that Badger and Moira had once had a steamy, illicit
affair of their own twenty years ago was neither here nor
there.

That afternoon, as
the unfortunate McKay was being slammed into the concrete wall of
the building, a large and extravagant bouquet of flowers was
delivered to the desk of one Miss Moira McMillan. Paid for on
Badger’s expenses. The whole episode had only enhanced the ageing
hack’s already formidable reputation.

But soon his stories
would be all people would have to remember him; what they forgot
about his career would be stored electronically in the archive. The
next time his name appeared in the newspaper he once loved it would
be no more than a three-paragraph filler mentioned on page two
about his passing.

But that was all to
come.

Connor laughed and
smiled as Badger retold tales of old outside Gartnavel’s Beatson
cancer unit before a nurse was sent to retrieve her patient at
dusk. Connor wondered how many more sunsets Badger would see. His
final words to Connor before being wheeled away were, ‘Did my
Crosbie tip help you out, son?’

‘It did, Badg, it
did.’

That’s all the dying
reporter needed to know as he disappeared back into the ward with a
huge smile stretched across his gaunt face.

24

The Confession

Osiris had
finished another meeting over lunch with yet another transport
boss, Stevie Holt, in the Bullion Bar in Edinburgh. The double
murder stories had moved off the front pages of the newspapers as
there was nothing left to report. Osiris knew that would all change
within the next forty-eight hours.

‘When you heading
back south?’ Stevie asked.

‘Tomorrow, I reckon.
Thursday the latest. I’ve got a few loose ends to tie up but I want
to beat the Friday traffic.’

Osiris actually
didn’t mind heavy traffic. Sitting in jams gave him more time to
listen to his self-help CDs. He enjoyed them most after a
successful kill. He felt he could really relate to every sentence
about positive energy when a plan had come off.

Now he needed a few
more pieces – and players – to fall into place. He was
certain that once that was achieved he would have completed several
of his ‘goals’.

He was about to make
Martin Seth an offer he couldn’t refuse.



Crosbie’s
inner monologue remained unusually silent as he listened intently
to the conversation between April and Martin Seth, which he was
hearing broadcast live from the surveillance equipment. What he
heard disturbed him greatly.

April had been at her
persuasive best, squeezing every last drop of information from her
interviewee, then going over each fact and timeline again. But the
alarm bells were ringing. Something just wasn’t right. Martin Seth
still wasn’t telling the truth. All Crosbie’s experience, training
and plain gut instinct told him Martin was lying. Strange,
considering Martin Seth had just confessed to murdering his
wife.



April was
having similar thoughts. Like Crosbie she’d spent her whole career
interviewing people from all walks of life – and she knew
bullshit when she heard it. But what to do? She had a confession in
the bag. She needed to speak to Connor before facing the Weasel or
Crosbie.

That wasn’t going to
be possible. No sooner had the electronic gates of the Seths’
mansion closed behind her, an unmarked police car flashed its
headlamps, summoning April to pull over.

The detective got out
of the passenger door and invited April into his car. ‘So what do
you think of Martin’s confession, you stupid bitch?’ is what
Crosbie heard himself ask, but hoped he’d managed to censor the
offensive remark in time. His fixed grin became almost painful as
he prayed he hadn’t once again insulted one of Scotland’s premier
journalists.

‘I’m not so sure,’
April replied.

‘Phew, got away with
it again,’ Crosbie thought with relief. But his moment of calm was
shattered when April added with a smile, ‘And who are you calling a
stupid bitch?’ Crosbie had been caught out again. ‘Did you go and
see Watt Wilson?’ she asked.

‘No, not yet, but I
will. I’ll call him today, I promise,’ Crosbie said shamefaced.

‘Right, what are we
going to do about Martin? He didn’t kill Selina, so that means he’s
covering up the real killer’s identity, which is very, very
strange. I mean, why would he do that?’

Crosbie played back
the recording on his digital receiver, which had captured every
word transmitted from April’s brooch microphone. Martin’s voice
filled the inside of the silver Mercedes. ‘She’d been cheating on
me … I’d been humiliated one time too many … I was the
brains behind Seth International … She got all the credit and
nearly drove us under with all those stupid celebrities she thought
were her friends.’

‘It’s a plausible
motive, pity it’s not true,’ Crosbie stated, adding, ‘We have
Martin’s mobile phone records from the day she was killed. He was
at his parents’ house with his kids. All of them have been
questioned, and even the six-year-old said his daddy took him to
school that morning. My pathologist places the time of Selina’s
death at around 9 a.m. The exact time Martin was on the school run.
So why the cover-up? Any ideas, cow face?’

April and DCI Crosbie
sat in silence, mulling over the confession compared to the facts.
She had come to find the barrage of insults from this high-ranking
police officer amusing, especially when she let him know his inner
conscience had escaped again.

‘I’ll need to
interview him once more,’ she said, ‘lay the facts on the table
that I know he was nowhere near the crime scene, and see if he’s
more forthcoming. And since you’re now reduced to farmyard insults,
if I’m an old cow, then you must be a cock.’

Crosbie sighed, ‘I’ll
phone your witch doctor now, fatso.’

April laughed, ‘This
bulk doesn’t maintain itself, you know. I am absolutely starving. I
need to eat
now
.’

25

Look into my
Eyes

Watt Wilson
lived in the lower conversion of a once grand Victorian mansion in
Cathkin Road on the city’s Southside. He had carefully decorated
his home cum business premises in the original style, with a
grandfather clock gently chiming in the study and walls lined with
row upon row of leatherbound journals.

His bald head,
half-moon spectacles, tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and
brogues gave him the air of an elderly scholar. But Watt was no
doctor. Far from it. In fact, he hadn’t bothered to read the many
books that gave such a grand air to his study. The truth was, Watt
was nothing more than a showman – a stage hypnotist,
performing cheap parlour tricks in town halls across the country.
He had once made a good living from it back in the late 1960s when
hypnotists were all the rage, but his stage career had been cut
short when one night a member of the audience – who it turned
out had a history of mental illness – was hypnotised on stage
by the great Watt Wilson.

Her schizophrenia had
been suppressed by a cocktail of strong medication, but once under
Watt’s spell her darker side was suddenly set free. She had
produced a kitchen knife from her bag and repeatedly stabbed the
unfortunate Wilson to within an inch of his life. The attack had
made front pages a long time ago. Since then Watt had reinvented
himself as a doctor of the mind. He stopped short of calling
himself a psychiatrist lest he feel the full wrath of the
Psychiatric Council of Great Britain as he didn’t have a single
psychiatric qualification.

He had gone back to
his old ways, hypnotising patients. But instead of asking them to
drop their trousers for the amusement of a drunken theatre
audience, he instilled them with positive thoughts.

His ‘happy hypnosis’
sessions, as he called them, proved successful enough for his
popularity to spread by word of mouth. Apparently there wasn’t a
‘mind matter’ that the great Watt Wilson couldn’t resolve with
around a dozen sessions – at fifty pounds each – on his
velvet-covered chaise-longue.

‘Depressed housewife?
Never mind, dear, just be grateful for what you’ve got,’ would be
the message that Watt would repeatedly chant while they were under
hypnosis.

His methods
worked … to a point. His clients certainly left Watt’s
sessions feeling better about themselves, but his lack of
professional training became apparent whenever one of his patients
returned with their existing problem unresolved. For his hypnosis
merely opened a can of worms for the more complicated cases.

Like the one who had
just walked through the door.

Crosbie hadn’t
identified himself as a police officer, but Watt recognised a
copper when he saw one. The dope parties he’d attended in the 1960s
were prone to ‘busts’ by loutish police officers with an appetite
for violence. All those old feelings of fear and loathing came back
when Watt set eyes on the officer of Her Majesty’s
Constabulary.

‘A friend recommended
you,’ Crosbie said curtly as he took off his jacket and placed it
neatly on the chaise-longue.

‘Well,’ Watt replied
with a well-rehearsed speech, ‘that’s the best recommendation of
all. How can I help you?’

Crosbie shattered
Watt’s routine with a chilling demand. ‘You can start by dropping
the professor act, you stage hypnotist cunt, and find me a
cure.’

Watt’s heart sank.
Not only did he hate his past catching up with him, but he already
knew he had bitten off more than he could chew with this mysterious
new patient.

26

Between a
Rock and a Hard Place

April
tucked into the café’s Mega Breakfast Special, which she had
repeatedly promised herself she would never order. It was like a
super-sized Scottish breakfast and could easily have fed four. But,
when under pressure, April ate even more than usual, which amounted
to a whole lot of food.

She was made to feel
even more guilty when the waitress Martel served it up by saying,
‘Here’s your heart attack on a plate.’

Connor appeared
beside her, shaking his head ruefully, ‘Good god, woman, even by
your standards, that is one mighty plateful.’

From her customary
full mouth, he managed to decipher the words, ‘I don’t care.’

‘Well, just to give
you the heads up, the Weasel’s on the warpath because you didn’t
phone in yesterday. I don’t mind you ignoring that idiot’s calls,
but why did you ignore mine? What the hell happened?’

April stopped chewing
and sat in silence. Tears filled her eyes as she then explained how
she believed Martin Seth’s murder confession wasn’t true, how DCI
Crosbie had confirmed her instincts, and how she literally didn’t
know what to do next. ‘I tried calling you, but got your voicemail.
I didn’t know what to tell the Weasel. He would have ignored my
concerns and splashed it. Then Crosbie would have denied it. So I
went swimming instead, which helped give me this healthy
appetite.’

Without a hint of
humour Connor said, ‘There is nothing remotely healthy about your
appetite. I tried calling you back, but your mobile must have been
out of juice. You should have kept trying to reach me. We could
have worked something out. You really are in the shit. The Weasel
wants you up on a disciplinary.’